[vos-d] SecondLife client goes Open Source

[Or Botton]

Granted, it was expected, but there is one major issue thats a big  
bad omen: And thats content copy protection.

SecondLife has been largely tauted as a place where you can make a  
"quick buck" by creating and selling copies of content. This is  
mostly an artificial market created by placing DRM on objects - being  
able to flag a texture, model, script or an entire package as non  
copyable, modifyable or transferable.

Personally, I am all for an opensource platform with no DRM involved.  
I believe that a VR platform can only become mainstream and  
widespread if it is open and free. But SecondLife's act is more self  
destructive because by nature they are not open and free.

With the source out, it would be a rather easy task to duplicate  
models and textures of objects, pretty much "breaking the DRM" with a  
very casual effort from the programmer. This could be very damaging  
to their internal economy. Again, I do not support the concept of  
having virtual economies, but doing what they just did is more like  
shooting their own foot.

Perhaps this signs that LindenLab now views the big gamers -  
companies and such as the real customers now? These people will have  
much less of an issue to "enforce their copyrights" then the regular  
person.

On Jan 8, 2007, at 5:52 PM, Len Bullard wrote:

> It was expected.  It gives them a way to push the financing of the
> development off to organizations like IBM and to claim they are an  
> open
> platform.  They need to do something to stop the burning of the VC  
> capital
> and they have to solve out some very difficult technical problems.
>
> Expect yet-another-big-burst of CNet articles.
>
> len
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vos-d-bounces at interreality.org [mailto:vos-d- 
> bounces at interreality.org]
> On Behalf Of Or Botton
> Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 9:38 AM
> To: VOS Discussion
> Subject: [vos-d] SecondLife client goes Open Source
>
> LindenLab have just opened the source code for the SecondLife client.
>
> http://secondlife.com/developers/opensource/
>
> This step has actually surprised me - I didnt think that they were
> anywhere near doing this for the next two years or so.
>
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